


Practiced Motions

by ChokolatteJedi



Series: Nick Verse [3]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Backstory, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e05 Unfinished Business, Gen, Guns, Memories, Past Child Abuse, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4529193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal has a flashback in the back of the limo</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practiced Motions

Neal frowned at the gun, his mind racing. He desperately tried to focus on the case, on the fact that he was apparently supposed to be playing a hitman instead of a courier, and what he would need to do to maintain his cover. Beneath those racing thoughts, however, his mind was reeling.

"Is everything alright?" the driver asked, snapping Neal back into the moment. He could do this, he decided. Acting the way he was supposed to was the first con Neal had learned, and damned if he hadn't been good at it.

Giving the driver a sharp look, Neal began to assemble the Ruger. Clip, barrel, silencer… the model wasn't one he was familiar with, but the principle was always the same. As his hands went through the practiced moments and his mind searched for ways to warn Peter, a small part of his brain fell back through the memories.

He was ten; sitting in the dimly lit garage, assembling and disassembling a nine mil as fast as he could as the faint sound of a game on upstairs and the stink of cheap beer flooded his senses. Every time he slowed or fumbled, the large, heavy hand on his shoulder would squeeze, and he would concentrate harder. His forearm ached, the large triangular bruise and series of small cuts were a reminder of what could have happened to his face if he hadn't been fast enough. Sometimes when he twisted his wrist wrong he felt a sharp stab of pain – later to be confirmed as a fracture – but he had to ignore it. He had done it wrong, and now he had to keep assembling and disassembling this gun until his father was satisfied.

Present Neal felt the car slowing and he forcibly pulled his mind away from his memories. The gun in front of him – different and yet the same as the one all those years ago – was prepped, and from the way the driver was concentrating on parking, Neal had apparently maintained his cover while lost in thought. He couldn't count the number of times that his body had acted one way while his mind had gone in a different direction; it was a skill perfected years ago.

Now he tried to catch back up, to get back into the moment and the con and the cover and figure out a way to salvage this operation. The fact that Peter and the others hadn't made a move yet was slightly worrying, and Neal wondered if there was some kind of com jammer in the limo. If so, he should be out of its range once he exited. Mentally composing his message for Peter, Neal took in their surroundings. If he had to give Peter directions he would need to know what neighborhood he was in.

If he just kept focusing on the case, then he wouldn't get lost in his memories. He had handled guns since leaving home – though in fairness he had been so pissed off at Avery's that he hadn't really thought about firing the shotgun until he'd already taken down both clay birds. He'd certainly had enough of them pointed at him in the last two years. But sitting in the mostly dark backseat of a car, assembling a handgun again had brought his memories crashing through the mental barriers he had believed were firmly secure. It would take Neal a while to build them back up again.

And in the meantime, he apparently had to go kill someone. "Peter, if you can hear this, the flight was long," he whispered.

Later, Neal would sit in his apartment with an untouched glass of wine and trace the invisible scar of his long-healed fracture. Later he would marvel at his ability to handle a gun again in front of Price and even pull off the fancy unchambering move he had only seen on TV. And even later he would lie to Peter about how he had known how to do any of it. But for now he let his body lead his mind, following the practiced motions of a con man.


End file.
